.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
I have to change to stay the same. Willem de Kooning
A rhapsodic melody of pure painterly poetry, Willem de Kooning’s Untitled XVI is a moving masterpiece of the artist’s late career. Executed in de Kooning’s largest format, the work was made in 1983, a critical year for the artist. He had been gradually evolving his style since the beginning of the decade, slowly developing what would become known as his Ribbon paintings. Untitled XVI reveals the last definitive stylistic shift for the artist. “1983 was a hinge year” John Elderfield notes, “that joined it to his work of the previous decade. By the end of the year, he was in very new territory” (de Kooning: a Retrospective, exh cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2011, p. 468). Here, de Kooning achieves a seemingly effortless airiness and “ethereal luminosity,” with the artist himself characterizing his newfound atmospheric luminism as “so airy and so thin” (quoted in J. Zilczer, A Way of Living: The Art of Willem de Kooning, New York, 2014, p. 227).
“I don’t want the pictures to look too easy, too slick,” de Kooning relayed to the art critic Amei Wallach in June 1983, contemporaneously to the present work. “It’s more like Matisse. He has such ordinary contents: a table, a woman sitting there. But he has that quality. He took the work out of it… I would like to do that in the new ones” (quoted in ibid., p. 233). With Untitled XVI, de Kooning relinquished his form luxuriant painterliness in favor of smooth, glazed surfaces of bright, transparent color. Limiting himself to a restricted palette of red, blue, and yellow, the artist inscribes calligraphic lines of varying widths across the canvas, each sensuously curving line masterfully executed with the confidence of decades of experience. The artist’s commitment to pursuing pictorial and spatial complexities remains apparent in the present work, however his strategies shifted from a reliance on a buildup of oils to the exploration of color and space.
Untitled XVI is also reflective of an important figurative development in de Kooning’s oeuvre. From his ionic Women series of the early 1950s, de Kooning maintained a certain figurative element even in his most abstract paintings. Here, a languid, lounging female form crystalizes out of the artist’s brushwork, appearing recumbent upon the central horizontal axis of the picture plane. As Elderfield notes of the evolution of his figurative motif, “in 1983, another, this time more radical change occurred: the paintings became sparer, eventually to be composed of large areas of varied whites across which run now much narrower bands and thin, mobile lines that cause the surface to buckle and turn in space, while shaping an elusive figuration” (J. Elderfield, op. cit., p. 441). The critic Klaus Kertess elaborates on this new abstracted figuration: “In slow motion, in subtly varying widths, all quite thin, the lush, generously curving lines languorously drift in and out of embraces to create a serene and sensuous dream of faraway female flesh, perhaps that of the many nudes crowding Ingres’s Turkish Bath” (“Further Reflection,” in Willem de Kooning: The Last Beginning, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2007, p. 21).
While appearing spontaneous, de Kooning started the composition with a charcoal underdrawing, and then worked and reworked the canvas, orchestrating his intricate network of blue and red ribbons intertwined with passages of modulated yellow and red. To achieve the unified, flat surface of Untitled XVI, the artist wielded his taper’s knife and also engaged in sgraffito, using a hard surface and even in some instances sanding down to create the appearance of pure color, similar in effect to Matisse’s mature painting of the 1930s. As his friend Judith Wolfe recalled of one conversation with de Kooning in 1983, “what he would like to do now would be very ‘free,’ and he gently waves his hands in the air. He thinks about Matisse’s La Danse” (quoted in J. Elderfield, op. cit., p. 450).
In tandem with de Kooning’s conscious channeling of Matisse’s influence, he also drew in inspiration from other arenas, most notably in his own earlier oeuvre, the work of his one-time mentor Arshile Gorky, and in the example of the Old Masters, particularly Titian and Rembrandt. As Elderfield notes, “de Kooning had regularly excavated the past in order to move forward; now he was again burrowing into his own past to pick up on the possibilities that he had not previously explored” (ibid., p. 453). De Kooning, like the Old Masters before him, retained his compositional studies from previous decades, and in his Late Ribbon paintings reengaged with them, reimagining them into new inventions. “I have to change to stay the same,” the artist proclaimed, paraphrasing the famous line from Giuseppe de Lampedusa’s The Leopard, where the progressive nephew Tancredi implores his aging uncle: ““For things to remain the same, everything must change” (quoted in J. Wolfe, “Glimpses of a Master,” in Willem de Kooning: Works from 1951-1981, exh.cat., Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, 1981, p. 16).
While reimagining his own early work into novel compositions, de Kooning simultaneously found new inspiration from his old mentor, Gorky. Early in his career, de Kooning learned from Gorky’s automatic method and calligraphic strokes, but he waited decades before he fully realized Gorky’s influence on canvas. “I learn much more from Gorky,” de Kooning once stated. “Listening, I was influenced by him, Just by being with him” (quoted in J. Zilczer, op. cit., p. 233). The Solomon R. Guggenheim held a retrospective just as de Kooning was refining his Ribbon style in 1981. Asked around the time of the show whether Gorky’s biomorphic line had inspired him, de Kooning responded: “Well, I don’t know. In a way I have him on my mind all the time” (quoted in J. Elderfield, op. cit., p. 453). As Elderfield writes, 1983 paintings “call up any number of de Kooning’s strange 1940s interiors, reaching back through Arshile Gorky even to the slippery shape of Salvador Dalí and the Surrealist in Pablo Picasso” (ibid., p. 465).
Nurtured by the most intense privacy, by uninterrupted contemplation of his own past as man and as an artist, de Kooning’s recent canvases now enter the public domain of late-style miracles in the pantheon of Western paintings. Robert Rosenblum
Musing over de Kooning’s late period, The art historian Robert Rosenblum identifies in their “ethereal simplicity” the same triumphant immateriality which appears in the late work of Titan, Rembrandt, or Turner, remarked how, “nurtured by the most intense privacy, by uninterrupted contemplation of his own past as man and as an artist, de Kooning’s recent canvases now enter the public domain of late-style miracles in the pantheon of Western paintings” (quoted in J. Zilczer, op. cit., p. 242). The Renaissance art historian David Rosand makes a similar connection between de Kooning’s late paintings and Titian and Rembrandt: “There is in such late work an evident disregard for externals, a kind of isolated self-sufficiency, an insistence on very basic structure—a return to the kind of unembarrassed reductiveness that the literary critic Barbara Hernstein Smith has called ‘the senile sublime.’ De Kooning’s latest paintings participate in this tradition of painterly transcendence” (“Editor’s Statement: Style and the Aging Artist,” Art Journal, vol. 46, no. 2, summer 1987, p. 92).
A quarter-century earlier, de Kooning, while on a sojourn to Italy, reflected upon making art in old age. “I cant figure it out,” he states. “how those old guys kept at it, kept painting the way they did… Titian, he was 90, with arthritis so bad they had to tie on his paint brushes” (quoted in G. Garrels, “Willem de Kooning and Italy: An Introduction,” in Willem de Kooning and Italy, exh. cat., Galerie dell ’Accademia, Venice, 2024, p. 24). Following his return from Italy in 1960, de Kooning described his thoughts on the late periods of the Old Masters he had just seen: “It seems that a lot of artists, when they get older, they get simpler: they feel their own miracle in nature; a feeling of being on the other side of nature… I get excited just to see that sky is blue, that earth is earth… I’m getting closer to that… then there is a time in your life when you just take a walk: and you walk into your own landscape” (ibid., pp. 23-24). Untitled XVI demonstrates de Kooning in the full confidence of his late style, walking off into his own abstracted landscape.
A rhapsodic melody of pure painterly poetry, Willem de Kooning’s Untitled XVI is a moving masterpiece of the artist’s late career. Executed in de Kooning’s largest format, the work was made in 1983, a critical year for the artist. He had been gradually evolving his style since the beginning of the decade, slowly developing what would become known as his Ribbon paintings. Untitled XVI reveals the last definitive stylistic shift for the artist. “1983 was a hinge year” John Elderfield notes, “that joined it to his work of the previous decade. By the end of the year, he was in very new territory” (de Kooning: a Retrospective, exh cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2011, p. 468). Here, de Kooning achieves a seemingly effortless airiness and “ethereal luminosity,” with the artist himself characterizing his newfound atmospheric luminism as “so airy and so thin” (quoted in J. Zilczer, A Way of Living: The Art of Willem de Kooning, New York, 2014, p. 227).
“I don’t want the pictures to look too easy, too slick,” de Kooning relayed to the art critic Amei Wallach in June 1983, contemporaneously to the present work. “It’s more like Matisse. He has such ordinary contents: a table, a woman sitting there. But he has that quality. He took the work out of it… I would like to do that in the new ones” (quoted in ibid., p. 233). With Untitled XVI, de Kooning relinquished his form luxuriant painterliness in favor of smooth, glazed surfaces of bright, transparent color. Limiting himself to a restricted palette of red, blue, and yellow, the artist inscribes calligraphic lines of varying widths across the canvas, each sensuously curving line masterfully executed with the confidence of decades of experience. The artist’s commitment to pursuing pictorial and spatial complexities remains apparent in the present work, however his strategies shifted from a reliance on a buildup of oils to the exploration of color and space.
Untitled XVI is also reflective of an important figurative development in de Kooning’s oeuvre. From his ionic Women series of the early 1950s, de Kooning maintained a certain figurative element even in his most abstract paintings. Here, a languid, lounging female form crystalizes out of the artist’s brushwork, appearing recumbent upon the central horizontal axis of the picture plane. As Elderfield notes of the evolution of his figurative motif, “in 1983, another, this time more radical change occurred: the paintings became sparer, eventually to be composed of large areas of varied whites across which run now much narrower bands and thin, mobile lines that cause the surface to buckle and turn in space, while shaping an elusive figuration” (J. Elderfield, op. cit., p. 441). The critic Klaus Kertess elaborates on this new abstracted figuration: “In slow motion, in subtly varying widths, all quite thin, the lush, generously curving lines languorously drift in and out of embraces to create a serene and sensuous dream of faraway female flesh, perhaps that of the many nudes crowding Ingres’s Turkish Bath” (“Further Reflection,” in Willem de Kooning: The Last Beginning, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2007, p. 21).
While appearing spontaneous, de Kooning started the composition with a charcoal underdrawing, and then worked and reworked the canvas, orchestrating his intricate network of blue and red ribbons intertwined with passages of modulated yellow and red. To achieve the unified, flat surface of Untitled XVI, the artist wielded his taper’s knife and also engaged in sgraffito, using a hard surface and even in some instances sanding down to create the appearance of pure color, similar in effect to Matisse’s mature painting of the 1930s. As his friend Judith Wolfe recalled of one conversation with de Kooning in 1983, “what he would like to do now would be very ‘free,’ and he gently waves his hands in the air. He thinks about Matisse’s La Danse” (quoted in J. Elderfield, op. cit., p. 450).
In tandem with de Kooning’s conscious channeling of Matisse’s influence, he also drew in inspiration from other arenas, most notably in his own earlier oeuvre, the work of his one-time mentor Arshile Gorky, and in the example of the Old Masters, particularly Titian and Rembrandt. As Elderfield notes, “de Kooning had regularly excavated the past in order to move forward; now he was again burrowing into his own past to pick up on the possibilities that he had not previously explored” (ibid., p. 453). De Kooning, like the Old Masters before him, retained his compositional studies from previous decades, and in his Late Ribbon paintings reengaged with them, reimagining them into new inventions. “I have to change to stay the same,” the artist proclaimed, paraphrasing the famous line from Giuseppe de Lampedusa’s The Leopard, where the progressive nephew Tancredi implores his aging uncle: ““For things to remain the same, everything must change” (quoted in J. Wolfe, “Glimpses of a Master,” in Willem de Kooning: Works from 1951-1981, exh.cat., Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, 1981, p. 16).
While reimagining his own early work into novel compositions, de Kooning simultaneously found new inspiration from his old mentor, Gorky. Early in his career, de Kooning learned from Gorky’s automatic method and calligraphic strokes, but he waited decades before he fully realized Gorky’s influence on canvas. “I learn much more from Gorky,” de Kooning once stated. “Listening, I was influenced by him, Just by being with him” (quoted in J. Zilczer, op. cit., p. 233). The Solomon R. Guggenheim held a retrospective just as de Kooning was refining his Ribbon style in 1981. Asked around the time of the show whether Gorky’s biomorphic line had inspired him, de Kooning responded: “Well, I don’t know. In a way I have him on my mind all the time” (quoted in J. Elderfield, op. cit., p. 453). As Elderfield writes, 1983 paintings “call up any number of de Kooning’s strange 1940s interiors, reaching back through Arshile Gorky even to the slippery shape of Salvador Dalí and the Surrealist in Pablo Picasso” (ibid., p. 465).
Nurtured by the most intense privacy, by uninterrupted contemplation of his own past as man and as an artist, de Kooning’s recent canvases now enter the public domain of late-style miracles in the pantheon of Western paintings. Robert Rosenblum
Musing over de Kooning’s late period, The art historian Robert Rosenblum identifies in their “ethereal simplicity” the same triumphant immateriality which appears in the late work of Titan, Rembrandt, or Turner, remarked how, “nurtured by the most intense privacy, by uninterrupted contemplation of his own past as man and as an artist, de Kooning’s recent canvases now enter the public domain of late-style miracles in the pantheon of Western paintings” (quoted in J. Zilczer, op. cit., p. 242). The Renaissance art historian David Rosand makes a similar connection between de Kooning’s late paintings and Titian and Rembrandt: “There is in such late work an evident disregard for externals, a kind of isolated self-sufficiency, an insistence on very basic structure—a return to the kind of unembarrassed reductiveness that the literary critic Barbara Hernstein Smith has called ‘the senile sublime.’ De Kooning’s latest paintings participate in this tradition of painterly transcendence” (“Editor’s Statement: Style and the Aging Artist,” Art Journal, vol. 46, no. 2, summer 1987, p. 92).
A quarter-century earlier, de Kooning, while on a sojourn to Italy, reflected upon making art in old age. “I cant figure it out,” he states. “how those old guys kept at it, kept painting the way they did… Titian, he was 90, with arthritis so bad they had to tie on his paint brushes” (quoted in G. Garrels, “Willem de Kooning and Italy: An Introduction,” in Willem de Kooning and Italy, exh. cat., Galerie dell ’Accademia, Venice, 2024, p. 24). Following his return from Italy in 1960, de Kooning described his thoughts on the late periods of the Old Masters he had just seen: “It seems that a lot of artists, when they get older, they get simpler: they feel their own miracle in nature; a feeling of being on the other side of nature… I get excited just to see that sky is blue, that earth is earth… I’m getting closer to that… then there is a time in your life when you just take a walk: and you walk into your own landscape” (ibid., pp. 23-24). Untitled XVI demonstrates de Kooning in the full confidence of his late style, walking off into his own abstracted landscape.